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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24426001">The Sleep of Reason</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG'>ELG</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Comicverse)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:22:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24426001</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of Utopia and the death of Logan, Scott meets with Namor in his dreams.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Scott Summers/Namor the Sub-Mariner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Sleep of Reason</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this a while back, completely forgot that it existed, and was just reminded of it by<br/>VixenRose1996 asking me for a Scott/Namor fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h5>The Sleep of Reason</h5>
<p>
  <i>“The search for…Utopia…is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.” </i>
</p>
<p> Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays</p>
<p>Magik said, “You need a vacation.” As they had just been disagreeing, Scott was braced to get tossed into a hell dimension but where she sent him was almost worse. It had to be a dream because he wasn’t seeing the world in red. It was infinitely more painful in color. The ozone scythed in from the ocean as the white surf ebbed and foamed. Utopia. As the sea breeze toyed mockingly with his hair, he thought he was accustomed to a manageable level of heartache but this spiked agonizingly. Had Napoleon felt like this on Elba? A man who had thought himself a hero but history damned as a villain. Perhaps history had felt spitefully wrong to him as well.</p>
<p>He roamed the beach morosely. He had spilled blood on this place – taken a beating from Osborn, another from Logan, another from Steve Rogers, and yet another from the Brood. What did it say about him that he would have given anything right now to have Logan standing in front of him, even yelling his head off and popping his claws in readiness to stab Scott with them again just to have him back? Blowing on his knuckles reflexively, Scott acknowledged that getting into a barfight and beating up mutant haters had been childish but it still felt like the best possible way of honoring his sometime friend.</p>
<p>The pillars of Utopia were still shadowing the skyline. He remembered Emma murmuring, “How Freudian…” in his ear while he pointed out in vain that this was Magneto’s asteroid, not his. He was just the one who had decided to make it the last stand for a mutantkind that would perhaps never be safe on the mainland.</p>
<p>“He’ll be back, you know.”</p>
<p>He hadn’t heard Namor until the Sub-Mariner was there in all his arrogant perfection, raking Scott from head to toe with a disapproving glance.</p>
<p>“Maybe.” That didn’t help with the unexpected ache of absence he was feeling now. Namor was as perfect as ever, lean strength beyond anything Scott could ever attain however many hours he spent in the Danger Room. Namor had brought him the head of Dracula once. He had seduced Emma once. He had drowned Wakanda once. He was nothing if not unpredictable. Scott was surprisingly pleased to see him and had no idea why. Perhaps because he was something else alive in this abandoned place. Everywhere he looked, he could see his own dead dreams, their ghosts everywhere. He had thought this was his kingdom and the Avengers had made it his Genosha, his graveyard. His reputation had died here, his place in the world. Xavier had died here…. He wished he could blame them for it but it always felt so much easier just to blame himself.</p>
<p>Namor was restless with his sentimentality. “Of course he will. And you shouldn’t be mourning him.”</p>
<p>“He was my friend.” Scott didn’t retreat as Namor strode closer, muscles hard under his skin, hair wet, strength incalculable. </p>
<p>“And your enemy.”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Scott didn’t flinch as Namor said the word or as he circled him. He thought they both knew how little difference that made. You didn’t have to like a man to love him. You didn’t have to agree with him to miss him when he left, your disagreements unresolved. Friendship was its own universe, filled with many inexplicable things, enmity was just one of them. “I still miss him.” </p>
<p>Namor had been an ally and an enemy to all of them over the years: Avengers and X-Men in number. He knew that in the end it didn’t matter what side you were on when a friend was standing on the other, he was still a friend.</p>
<p>“You led us to disaster,” Namor said coolly. </p>
<p>“I wasn’t expecting Stark to drop the phoenix on us. I suppose I should have calculated all possible variables but that was insanely reckless, even for him.”</p>
<p>Another strutting circle, Namor walking through Scott’s shadow as if it wasn’t even there. It was strange to be looked at so closely from all angles, as if he were a cactus inexplicably growing in a swamp.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I want to punish you for our defeat or console you for our losses,” Namor said. He looked around at Utopia, its dejected ruins already sea-stripped and wind-torn; a monument to what became of mutants when they dared to get uppity enough to demand their own autonomy. Scott thought that was probably how the world saw it now – the Norman Osborn way.</p>
<p>Wearily, Scott said, “Can’t you do both?”</p>
<p>Abruptly, they were naked on the beach; the same beach where Logan had clawed him and Scott’s skin had torn open at the touch of his claws, wept tears of blood, their bodies locked together in spandex-shredded fury. Namor’s strength was incredible, his face and body both like something chiseled out of sea-stone. When Scott touched his bare chest it was cool and hard under his fingers. Namor, at least, was unchanged. Still perfect, still beautiful, still capable of madness or of kindness; a man of great and terrible vision; another who in his time had been a broken king without a country or a people.</p>
<p>“Does the Boy King of Utopia want to be bruised in the ruins of his broken dreams?”</p>
<p>That was too complicated a concept for a sea-battered dreamscape. “What did Emma want you to do to me, Namor? When she was in your head and the two of you were sharing all those dirty thoughts?”</p>
<p>Namor flattened him on the surf, a hand to Scott’s throat pinning him down, oddly brisk, oddly impersonal. When the sea rolled in, it carried an indigo-green light of its own that lapped over Namor like a playful dolphin. His body was chiseled perfection, the wings on his feet as delicate as falling feathers.</p>
<p>“She wanted me to master you until you begged for mercy while she watched.”</p>
<p>Scott licked his lips and looked up into Namor’s eyes. “Pretend she’s watching.”</p>
<p>The pain was so intense that for a moment he thought it must be real, after all; all that lean and terrible strength, planes and waves of it, splitting him open. He cried out and Namor was merciless.</p>
<p>“Remember when you called me ‘my lord’ and I told you that I was not your king, Summers?”</p>
<p>Panting through the pain, Scott managed a hoarse, “Yes”.</p>
<p>“Call me ‘my lord’. Call me your king.”</p>
<p>Scott did.</p>
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